Nicki Chen's Blog

Many years ago, while we were living in the Philippines, I took my first writing course, a correspondence course I’d found advertised in a magazine. When I received the course materials, I was surprised to find that the first lesson was on “noticing”. I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised. That is the first step. […]

Many years ago, while we were living in the Philippines, I took my first writing course, a correspondence course I’d found advertised in a magazine. When I received the course materials, I was surprised to find that the first lesson was on “noticing”. I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised. That is the first step. […]

Last week in my post about the brave students at the University of the South Pacific, I mentioned that my husband and I had taken a couple of classes there to study Bislama, the national language of Vanuatu. Friends of ours laughed at us. “Bislama is just pidgin English,” they said. “Why do you want […]

The story in The New York Times Magazine caught my attention because it was about students from the University of the South Pacific. My alma mater. (Okay, I’m not sure I can call it my alma mater after taking only one class there.) The University of the South Pacific is a small school on a […]

I try to take a walk most days, not a long walk, just enough to get some exercise and experience firsthand a bit of the natural world. Usually, I just step out my front door and turn right and then left or right. Either way, the neighborhoods are pleasant and the dog walkers friendly. Every […]

I was a child in the time before most childhood vaccinations. The only exceptions were smallpox and eventually polio. Smallpox Smallpox vaccinations are a real success story. It’s believed that smallpox has been around for 3000 years. Before vaccinations, three out of ten people who caught it died. Vaccine to the rescue. An experiment in […]

It was a beautiful day in early September, the day after Labor Day. We were keeping up with the traffic in my sister’s favorite lane—the far right. (I prefer to stick in the center lane, but … Sue was driving.) You might think traffic on I-5 would be heavy on the day after Labor Day, […]

Oh, how I love the long days and blue skies of summer! The roses and petunias, the marigolds and black-eyed Susans. Here in the Pacific Northwest, summer has been making a smooth, gradual retreat. The days have shortened, little by little, hardly enough to complain about or even notice. Tomorrow, September 22, is the end […]

I’ve never been a viewer of South Park. (The visuals are so unpleasant.) But this new season is making big news. So I checked it out, and I noticed that the devil has a big recurring role. They depict him as a husky orange character who sleeps at the White House. So far, he doesn’t […]

Staring at the blank page is a useless exercise. For me at least. So where do I find an idea I can turn into a story? It’s not easy. But some of my best finds come in small sizes, tiny bits of gossip or information, the kind that makes me wonder where it might lead. […]